Movies.com Exclusive Interview with Michael Welch

Movies.com recently had an exclusive interview with Michael Welch about his upcoming film Hansel and Gretel & the 420 Witch. Here is some of the interview in addition to several more exclusive stills!

Movies.com: You rose to fame via Twilight, but you’ve definitely kept yourself busy with other projects, too. Why add this one to your growing resume?

Michael Welch: I was really drawn to the originality and creativity of this project. I think Edgar Wright really created a new genre of filmmaking by mixing a bunch of genres together and really paying tribute to them seriously, but almost creating a whole new world and I feel like that’s what this movie does. If we do our jobs right, the feel of the film should be very quirky and funny, but also very scary and disturbing as well. So ultimately we’re just trying to make a really entertaining movie and I think we’re doing that.

Movies.com: How about your character? Have you seen the Hansel and Gretel episode of Once Upon a Time or have you been following Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters at all?

Welch: I actually didn’t do any Hansel & Gretel-specific research. I didn’t watch any of theHansel & Gretel projects because I really wanted this to feel like just a real guy that you would meet in your everyday life and in a way, separate it from what’s been established about the Hansel character up to this point. The parents are absent from our lives, which is the case in the original Hansel & Gretel so I’ve sort of had to raise my sister and I take care of her and I support her and I love her, but at the same time, I’m also a young man trying to find my own way and kind of getting to the point in my life where maybe I’m getting sick of this whole set up and so that’s kind of given the character somewhat of a sharp biting sense of humor, which is his way of dealing with life.

Honestly, the main thing I watched in preparation as far as figuring out what kind of tone to bring to this character were old episodes of Arrested Development for Jason Bateman’s performance. I felt like he really brought something subtle and wonderful to that role, which is a guy who is trying to be a rock with all of this insanity going on around him and has very little control and the one thing he does have control is his way of dealing with life, which is a very dry sarcastic sense of humor, which is how he gets through his days.